Ancient Sparta has become a major field of study in ancient history over the last four decades. But so far it has largely remained an issue for Sparta specialists, while the rest of Greek historians have rarely put Sparta at the centre of their attention. The two-volume Blackwell Companion to Sparta, edited by Anton Powell, is a major contribution which should give Sparta its rightful place in the study of Greek history.Footnote ¹ This companion should stand as a model for companion volumes: the twenty-nine contributions manage to combine introducing beginners and non-specialists to the field, providing encyclopaedic coverage of the evidence and the aspects of the subject, and asking new questions and offering new points of view. The volume is divided into an introduction and four further sections: on Spartan origins and archaic Sparta; on political and military history from the Persian Wars to the Roman period; on the politics, economy, society, and culture of classical, Hellenistic, and Roman Sparta; and on the reception of Sparta in the modern West.

Two major themes stand out. The first is the ‘Spartan mirage’ that has shaped ancient and modern images of Sparta. The contributors laboriously deconstruct the mirage and present what we can really know about Spartan women, education, or material culture. But, while scholarship has so far emphasized the role of outsiders and post-classical concerns in creating the Spartan mirage, some contributors have rightly stressed the active role of Spartan mendacity and propaganda in the process. Anton Powell fruitfully proposes that the Spartan-constructed mirage can be used as a mirror version of what Spartans feared or did not wish to reveal about their world. This approach has important implications for many other aspects of Greek history. The second major theme concerns Spartan exceptionality. Once taken for granted, it has been subjected to consistent critique by Stephen Hodkinson, who has stressed that Spartan institutions and practices are often a mixture of variations on common Greek themes and modifications for particular purposes. The various chapters take diverse stands as regards Spartan exceptionality, but their discussions necessarily raise important questions and points about Greek history in general (for example, van Wees's chapter on austerity and luxury), and this is another major reason that this work should have a very wide readership.

In recent years a new narrative has emerged in Greek history. This narrative proposes that classical Greece was ‘wealthy Hellas’, where free markets and democracy created large-scale prosperity and innovation unheard of until then. This approach correctly stresses the novel significance of markets, as well as the important concentrations of wealth in classical Greece; but it largely eschews asking whether markets had deeply negative effects too and whether wealth could co-exist with and depend on large-scale exploitation and poverty. It is a testament to the vitality of the field that three recent books reviewed here attempt to explore the issues of poverty, exploitation, and the experience of the subaltern classes in classical Greece.

Back in the 1950s, Moses Finley used the recent decipherment of Linear B in order to argue that the Homeric world and the world of the Mycenaean palaces had nothing in common. As a result, Greek historians have largely conceived their field as starting with the archaic period, and certainly after 1200 bce. Julien Zurbach's monumental two-volume study shows the need to adopt a long-term perspective.Footnote ² It explores the role of agricultural labour and access to land over the millennium between 1400 and 500 bce. At the same time, Zurbach stresses the significance of inequality and exploitation as a major aspect of the development of the Greek world. He places the peasant household at the centre of his narrative, alongside its exploitation by various institutions and relationships: from the Mycenaean palaces and temples to the Dark Age and archaic landowner elites and the emerging institutions of the market. In the process, he explores in detail the evidence for systems of landownership and land use, from the Linear B tablets, through Homer and Hesiod, to the epigraphic and literary sources for the archaic poleis across the Mediterranean and the Black Sea. An important aspect of his discussion is an issue that has attracted limited interest from ancient historians: while we have paid a lot of attention to the exploitation of free and slave labour as the foundation of ancient class structures, less attention has been paid to debt as a long-term instrument of structuring class relationships, as Zurbach rightly argues. This book is a timely call for the need to pay serious attention to exploitation in ancient history, an issue that has been almost obliterated in recent syntheses of ancient economic history. At the same time, its specific interpretations will generate debate and disagreements, given the nature of the sources. Zurbach interprets the absence of penalties for defaulting debtors in Hesiod as evidence for a major change in the archaic period, when enslavement for debt was a widespread phenomenon: but can the text bear the weight of such an interpretation? While the emphasis on inequality and exploitation is salutary, it must be accompanied by an extensive conceptual and methodological debate on how to study these issues.

The second book to be examined is Gabriel Zuchtriegel's exploration of colonization and subalternity in classical Greece.Footnote ³ Colonization is usually excised from narratives of classical Greece, being considered a primarily archaic phenomenon. Zuchtriegel rightly argues that it was a crucial aspect of the classical period and documents the number and diversity of classical colonial projects. But his emphasis lies on the colonial experience of subaltern groups such as peasants and shepherds, craftsmen, and women. The study is based on the evidence from excavations, fieldwork, and written sources from Heraclea Lucana in south Italy, with other colonies from the Mediterranean and the Black Sea brought in for comparative purposes. The main interpretative theme is that classical colonies were conceived as egalitarian communities of farmers who lived in the city, with little trade and few crafts. Gradually the egalitarian origins were followed by deep inequalities, evident in the consequent emergence of a countryside inhabited by excluded peasants and the growth of crafts. The development of class theories by Greek thinkers should be seen against the background of the colonial experience and its socio-economic effects. While much in this interpretation seems to me debatable, this is a pioneering study that uses the evidence of urban centres with their houses and workshops, rural habitats, graves, and sanctuaries in order to reconstruct the experience of subaltern groups. The methodological problems of how to interpret material culture and link literary texts and artefacts will require further discussion. Slaves are particularly prominent in texts, but they are invisible in the archaeological record. The solution is not to search for slaves in archaeology but to think of what is revealed by the material world and by the world of the texts and how (if at all) they relate to each other. This study is an important first step in this direction.

Claire Taylor's book on Athenian poverty is a major conceptual advance in the field.Footnote ⁴ Taylor shows that poverty is not merely a matter of absolute economic deprivation; it is also a matter of social exclusion created by structural inequalities and constructed through ideological discourses. At the same time, poverty must be seen from the point of view of the poor; this requires not only exploring their lived experience but also realizing that poverty must be explored within a wider framework that examines the role of various resources in enabling people to fulfil their capabilities. Taylor argues that Athenian discourses on poverty are not direct reflections of reality but contestations over certain kinds of behaviour. She shows that the number of Athenian poor was significant, even though it did not reach the extent and level of Roman poverty. She explores the lived experience of poverty by looking at duration (conjunctural poverty), depth (structural poverty), and gender. Equally significant is her exploration of how poor people coped with poverty, by exploring both the institutions and practices that reproduced poverty and allowed the poor to deal with it, and also the forms of agency and discourse that the poor employed in order to live their lives with dignity. Finally, Taylor attempts to offer criteria for writing the changing history of Athenian poverty. This is a remarkable book, which shows why the current fixation with ancient economic growth needs to be balanced with the concurrent and interlinked phenomena of inequality, deprivation, and social exclusion; the agency of rich and poor should also play a major role in our accounts.

The current review includes a particularly rich crop of books on Hellenistic history. I start with two splendid volumes that link classical Athens and its democracy not only with the Hellenistic world but also the Roman imperial period. Vincent Azoulay has used the famous statues of the Athenian tyrant-slayers Harmodius and Aristogeiton as a means through which to explore the emergence and development of Athenian democracy, the history of Greek political thought, the history of public space, the relationship between the city and its benefactors, and the world of the symposium and its material culture.Footnote ⁵ As this description shows, this is an immensely rich book. Azoulay demonstrates that the erection of the statues of the tyrant-slayers was a major innovation, as it did not fit any of the pre-existing categories of sculpture (divine, votive, funerary). Even more, the absence of the slaughtered tyrant from the composition enabled the abstraction of the pair of statues from its original theme of representation and its radical reinterpretation according to the changing circumstances. Azoulay uses the history of the statues and their space, their representations in other media and in literature, and their successive re-interpretations by their various audiences, in order to trace major developments in the history of Athens. But he also explores the process through which Athens was progressively transformed into a symbol of classical Greece that could be employed for various purposes in the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, as well as the modern world from the Renaissance onwards.

Azoulay's book must be read alongside the volume edited by Mirko Canevaro and Benjamin Gray, as they complement each other in a very stimulating way.Footnote ⁶ Their book examines the Hellenistic reception of two important and interlinked phenomena: Athenian democracy and Athenian culture. It has long been known that in the Hellenistic world democracy became a widely lauded word, while Greek culture from the Hellenistic period onwards was strongly based on an Athenian model. What was the link between these two processes? This is an extremely rich volume, which will repay close study. There is no space to summarize all thirteen essays so I will focus on certain key themes. The first concerns the nature of Hellenistic politics and Hellenistic democracy. John Ma's contribution should be required reading for a long time; he coins the term ‘the great convergence’ in order to describe the process through which a particular model of a largely democratic polis became dominant from the late classical period onwards. But how democratic was Hellenistic democracy? Athenian democracy was an imperial democracy, which could thrive without outside interference; Shane Wallace's exploration of Alexander and democracy rightly stresses that most classical and Hellenistic democracies had to face constant imperial interference and create a modus vivendi with imperial powers. Such approaches allow us to reconstruct the vivacity of Hellenistic politics and political thought and the role of the Athenian model. Some discussions focus on Athenian imperial politics, while others explore the ruling of the unwieldy demos by the Athenian politicians. Ben Gray's chapter fruitfully excavates Hellenistic debates on civic values, while Mirko Canevaro shows that the imitation of Athenian forensic oratory offered a means through which the Athenian model could shape the ‘great convergence’. This brings us to the second major theme, the processes that turned Athenian culture into the paragon of classical Greece that still shapes modern perceptions. Nino Luraghi offers a splendid essay on how Athenian reconstructions and employments of their past in the early Hellenistic period opened the way for the concept of classical Greece, while other essays explore the significance of New Comedy and Hellenistic philosophy for this process.

Greek history has suffered from the dominance of either a local framework, which treats poleis as self-enclosed entities, or the abstraction of ‘ancient Greece’. The creation of alternative frameworks is a major desideratum for the future, and regional and network studies have started to make a major contribution in this respect. This trend is clearly visible in the concurrent publication of two important syntheses concerning the Hellenistic Peloponnese. Greek history was deeply regional, and without such regional studies our understanding will remain deeply circumscribed. Luckily, the two volumes by Ioanna Kralli and Graham Shipley complement rather than repeat each other.

Kralli's book is an invaluable political history of the Peloponnese from the battle of Leuctra in 371 to the decisive Roman victory of 146 bce.Footnote ⁷ This choice to include the later classical period, also followed by other recent volumes like the one by Chrubasic and King examined below, is a very fruitful way of creating the right perspective within which to explore Hellenistic history. The book makes three important contributions. The first is to create a long-needed narrative of political history, an essential tool given the fragmentary sources. The second is to allow us to see Peloponnesian politics and interstate relations in the long term. The volume shows the significance of Macedonia and the Achaean League in reshaping Peloponnesian politics but a particular strength of Kralli's account is her emphasis on the role of Sparta in Peloponnesian politics over a long period. Even after the decisive impact of the loss of Messenia and the emergence of major antagonists such as Macedonia and the Achaeans, Sparta's role remained crucial. This emphasis will be important for re-evaluating the role of Sparta in Greek interstate politics of the classical period, as well as the reasons why Peloponnesian states chose to align with Sparta from the archaic period to the Roman dominance. Finally, Kralli's study of the friendly interactions among Peloponnesian states is a welcome addition to our understanding of the structure of interstate relations.

Shipley's book complements Kralli's political narrative by offering a thematic approach to Peloponnesian politics, economics, and society.Footnote ⁸ These thematic accounts are united by a common theme: what was the impact on Peloponnesian politics, economics, and society of the Macedonian intervention between 338 and 197 bce? This is a highly laudable aim, as Shipley tries to combine the event-based narratives of warfare, diplomacy, and politics with the long-term economic, social, and cultural processes. He argues that the Macedonian involvement in the Peloponnese had limited aims and was primarily intended to pre-empt any threats to Macedonian security from this area or to use involvement in the Peloponnese as a springboard for involvement in other areas. The limited nature of Macedonian aims leads Shipley to argue for a continuity approach to Peloponnesian politics; as in the classical period, internal stasis and foreign policy attachments continued to foment unrest without any major changes. In the same vein, he argues that warfare and stasis did not have any large-scale and long-term effect on Peloponnesian economies and landscapes: examining rural and urban landscapes, material culture, and coinage, he finds regional diversity and general prosperity rather than crisis and decline. Equally important is his attempt to account for continuity and change by looking at different spatial scales: peninsula, region, polis, and locality. Even if one does not agree with all the answers, the questions this book poses and the framing of the answers should be very widely read.

Hellenistic Delos is a site with an immensely rich epigraphic and archaeological record. Christy Constantakopoulou explores this material by employing a network perspective to make sense of the history and development of the sanctuary in the period of independence in the third century and early second century bce, as well as of its relationships to various communities, individuals, and kings.Footnote ⁹ The book uses the network approach to reinterpret some major phenomena, but is also careful to signpost the limits of what can be achieved with the available sources. Constantakopoulou reinterprets the emergence of the Islanders League not as a royal creation but from a bottom-up regional perspective; she explores the networks with communities and kings that can be reconstructed through the Delian proxeny decrees, stresses the role of the local community as well as the major powers in the monumentalization of the island, and explores Delian connections and networks through the dedications by individuals and communities recorded in the Delian inventories. She stresses persuasively the largely regional connections of the sanctuary; this shows once more the urgent need for more regional studies.

Ryan Boehm has devoted a stimulating volume to the urban foundations of the age of the Successors.Footnote ¹⁰ This was a crucial period for the development of the structures and traditions of Hellenistic kingship and its system of peer kingdoms. As Boehm shows, the Successors created within a short span a number of important urban foundations (Thessaloniki, Demetrias, Cassandreia, Ilion, Alexandreia Troas, and Ephesus) through the processes of synoikism of existing settlements and communities. What is important in this volume is the author's ability to approach the issue from two distinct but interlinked points of view. The first is that of the Successors and the reasons for which they instigated foundations as part of their attempt to consolidate their territories and create the nexus of infrastructure, resources, and support that would enable them to face their adversaries in a very competitive world. Boehm's study will have some serious implications on how we conceive the economic policies of ancient states. Alongside this top-down approach, Boehm also illustrates the bottom-up perspective of how pre-existing communities that were incorporated in the new foundations negotiated the terms of their new life in regard both to the Successors and to the other participant communities. This book makes a valuable contribution towards rethinking both city and empire in the Hellenistic period.

One of the major gaps in Hellenistic history is the result of the general neglect of social history. Given the enormous diversity of the Hellenistic world, any progress in this field can only come through the accumulation of case studies. François Kirbihler's magisterial study of Ephesus between 133 bce and 48 ce is a major contribution to the field.Footnote ¹¹ While Boehm's study explores how the interaction between city and Successor king created a new community and settlement at Ephesus, Kirbihler uses the rich epigraphic and archaeological evidence to investigate how Ephesian politics, economics, and society were shaped by the interaction between the Ephesian citizens, the Roman Empire and its governing structures, and the Italian diaspora of settlers. He explores the impact of the Roman Empire on civic institutions, the installation of the Italian diaspora in an important commercial and cultural centre, and the gradual fusion of Greeks and Italians into the elite that dominated the city from the Julio-Claudian times onwards. The book includes a detailed study of the origins and modes of settlements of the Italian diaspora, and thus makes a significant contribution to our understanding of the processes of Mediterranean mobility. Like Shipley's study, Kirbihler considers the interconnection between politics, warfare, and material life; the exploration of such a nexus forms a necessary addition to current approaches to the ancient economy.

A new study by Thorolf Christensen, Dorothy Thompson, and Katelijn Vandorpe investigates the link between land and taxation in Ptolemaic Egypt.Footnote ¹² The study is based on the publication, translation, and extensive commentary of a late second-century bce land survey for the Apollonopollite nome of Upper Egypt. The document describes the various categories of land and the taxes assessed on them. A remarkable fact of this document is that private land covers the overwhelming majority of recorded land, a feature that differentiates Upper Egypt from other areas of the country. This is interpreted as a result of the revolt of Upper Egypt, which was ruled by native pharaohs between 207 and 186 bce, and the confiscation and sale of land by the victorious Ptolemies after re-establishing control. The survey also records a very limited amount of land ceded by the state to cleruchs, in contrast again to other areas of Egypt. Finally, the survey reveals the processes through which land was assessed on the basis of location, type of land, and fertility. This important publication provides further documentation of the significant diversity that existed within ancient Egypt and offers welcome balance to the dominance of middle Egypt in modern reconstructions, owing to the preponderance of surviving evidence from this area.

The final work in this review is Boris Chrubasik and Daniel King's edited volume on the interaction between Hellenism and local communities between 400 bce and 250 ce.Footnote ¹³ The book includes a short introduction by the editors and eight chapters that follow three general axes. The first is institutions and political practices, exploring the interaction between Greek and local traditions as regards kingship (the Seleucid Empire), the polis and public practices (Babylon, Palmyra, Dura), and associations (Egypt); the second is the interaction between different cultural traditions in specific texts or corpora; and the third is the exploration of the impact of Greek culture and Hellenization on whole regions (Asia Minor, Caria, Judaea). Individual chapters present fascinating evidence and raise stimulating questions, such as the uses of Greek medical texts in an Egyptian temple context, or the political motivations for the use of Greek and Greek practices by Anatolian communities before Alexander. Nevertheless, it is rather disappointing that most chapters fail to define Hellenism and Hellenization and do not engage with the fruitful debates on these issues that have emerged over the last twenty years. What could have been achieved is shown by Chrubasik's chapter, which explores fruitfully the variety of processes involved in Hellenization by comparing Hecatomnid Caria and Hellenistic Judaea. Finally, the very extended temporal framework adopted raises some important questions which should be addressed: if we need to avoid the idea that each period is characterized by a single and distinct form of cultural interaction, should we not also observe that certain important events and developments affected the processes of interaction in significantly new ways?